An online trading community provides participants with a structured method for trading, bartering, or selling goods and services. These communities often have forum

Internet forum

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...

s and chatroom

Chat room

The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing...

s designed to facilitate communication between the members. An online trading community can be likened electronic equivalent of a bazaar

Bazaar

A bazaar , Cypriot Greek: pantopoula) is a permanent merchandising area, marketplace, or street of shops where goods and services are exchanged or sold. The term is sometimes also used to refer to the "network of merchants, bankers and craftsmen" who work that area...

, flea market

Flea market

A flea market or swap meet is a type of bazaar where inexpensive or secondhand goods are sold or bartered. It may be indoors, such as in a warehouse or school gymnasium; or it may be outdoors, such as in a field or under a tent...

, or garage sale

Garage sale

A garage sale, also known as a yard sale, rummage sale, tag sale, lawn sale, attic sale, moving sale, or junk sale, is an informal, irregularly scheduled event for the sale of used goods by private individuals, in which "block sales" are allowed, so that sellers are not required to obtain business...

.

History

One of the earliest trading sites on the internet (with exception to eBay

EBay

eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

 which accepts cash transactions for all goods) was Game Trading Zone

GameTZ.com

GameTZ.com is an online trading community established in late 1996 which allows people to trade video games, books, music, movies, and other items through negotiating with other traders from countries worldwide...

. The domain name

Domain name

A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....

 ugtz.com was implemented in an independent database

Database

A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...

 in the spring 1999. This was a departure from simply listing items on a forum or text document. The database helped traders by showing them a list of potential trading matches, and showed historical transactions as well.

Formal trading communities

A formal trading community consists of a website or network of websites that facilitate and track trade transactions. Some websites, such as the video game trading site Goozex

Goozex

Goozex is an online trading community established in July 2006 which allows people to trade video games and movies in the United States, Canada and Bermuda. The name Goozex comes from a shortened version of "Goods Exchanged." Goozex uses an internal point system as currency and works as a middleman...

, charge transactional fees per trade, while other similar sites such as GameTZ do not.

Key elements of formal trading communities

• Transactional tracking
• Ratings and feedback system
• Content listing, referencing, and matching

Trading communities

There are several community based websites that have a broader scope and lend themselves to a trading environment.

• 1UP
  1UP.com
  1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
  
   is a website dedicated to the publishing of news, videos, and other related media dealing with video games. There is a growing section of the site though dedicated the trading of games and DVDs on their message boards.
• Craigslist
  Craigslist
  Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities featuring free online classified advertisements, with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums....
  
   is a site for posting personal advertisements but many users have found this a less than conventional means of trading goods online with local residents.
• GameTZ is regarded as being the oldest remaining website dedicated to buying, selling and trading video games on all modern and legacy platforms.
• IGN
  IGN
  IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
  
   is another website dedicated to videogame news and media that also has message boards dedicated to online trading. The distinguishing factors being that IGN has a much larger integrated database of games and DVDs in existence that users can add to their collection lists for trade purposes as well as mark the ones they are playing to lock from trade.

General rules of conduct

Some online trading communities have specific rules adopted by the users of that community, and though they can differ most have settled upon a few standard practices:

• The less experienced trader (usually indicated by their feedback or trade history) sends their half first.
• It is generally frowned upon by most communities to "thread crap" (A term referring to a user not involved in the pending trade undercutting a trade in progress with either a better deal or reasons for the trade not to take place).
• While trading any used items online, be sure to include the condition and quality of the product so as the receiver can determine its overall value.

Trading circle

A trading circle is a form of online trading designed to facilitate viewing of television series and episodic media. Physical media such as videocassettes, DVDs and CDs are exchanged via mail. Each member agrees to pass an episode on to the next member in a timely fashion, thereby allowing all members of the group to view the series. This communal trading method is also used by special interest clubs. Some of these groups (among many) include anime club

Anime club

An anime club is an organization that meets to discuss, show, and promote anime in a local community setting and can also focus on broadening Japanese cultural understanding. Anime clubs are increasingly found at universities and high schools. Organizers may also utilize public meeting spaces such...

s.

Examples

• DidYouInvest.com - investment trading community
• TrdPoint.com - a peer reviewed community for self directed traders and investors
• Mydvdtrader.com - DVD and Video game trading community
• GameTZ.com
  GameTZ.com
  GameTZ.com is an online trading community established in late 1996 which allows people to trade video games, books, music, movies, and other items through negotiating with other traders from countries worldwide...
  
   - A game trading community, born out of the Usenet
  Usenet
  Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
  
   community in the mid 90s
• Goozex
  Goozex
  Goozex is an online trading community established in July 2006 which allows people to trade video games and movies in the United States, Canada and Bermuda. The name Goozex comes from a shortened version of "Goods Exchanged." Goozex uses an internal point system as currency and works as a middleman...
  
   - Video game trading community
• TradeGamesNow.com - a video game/DVD trading community
• EasyBizVietnam.com - Vietnam Business- EasyBizVietnam Online Trade Community
• TekiHub.com - online trading community in the Philippines
  Philippines
  The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
  
  for tech products and services